Copyright by Hazem Fahmy 2021 The Thesis Committee for Hazem Fahmy Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis: Over at the Dracula Place: Transnational Cult Cinema and Class Critique in Mohamed Shebl’s Anyab APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Charles Ramirez Berg, Supervisor Blake Atwood, Co-Supervisor Over at the Dracula Place: Transnational Cult Cinema and Class Critique in Mohamed Shebl’s Anyab by Hazem Fahmy Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts and Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2021 Acknowledgements To Mama and Baba, always. This thesis would not have been possible without Summer, my rock. iv Abstract Over at the Dracula Place: Transnational Cult Cinema and Class Critique in Mohamed Shebl’s Anyab Hazem Fahmy, MA/MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2021 Supervisor: Charles Ramirez Berg, Blake Atwood Using cult cinema studies, remake studies and camp theory, this project analyzes Mohamed Shebl’s musical debut film, Anyab (1981)––a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)––to examine the cultural politics of early 1980s Egypt. Integrating the literature on cult as well as remade films with that on the cultural history of Egypt following the economic liberalization policies of the 1970s, this thesis seeks to nuance our understanding of the relationship between Egyptian cinema and class. Moreover, I aim to contribute to the literatures on cult and camp studies by demonstrating their applicability in the understudied Egyptian context. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: Where Are All the Middle-Eastern Disco Vampires Now? ..........1 Anyab as a (Mistheroized) Transnational Text ...........................................................6 Genre Circuits and Anyab’s (Mis)Reception..............................................................9 The Methodology of Reading Anyab ........................................................................14 The Infitah and Anyab’s Cultural Critique ...............................................................20 Camp, Cult and Class................................................................................................23 Chapter 2: There’s a Light / Where’s the Light?: The Remaking and Recamping of Rocky Horror ...............................................................................................................35 Defining Iqtibas ........................................................................................................37 Remakes as Memes ...................................................................................................44 The Vampire as a Transnational Icon .......................................................................48 Rocky Horror and the Terrorizing of Middle America .............................................51 Rocky Horror and the Performance of Camp ...........................................................56 Chapter 3: You’re Wrong! There Are Vampires Everywhere!: Ahmed Adawiya and the Cultural Politics of Infitah......................................................................................66 Vampires and Class Politics .....................................................................................67 The Infitahi as Effendi Crisis ....................................................................................70 Ahmed Adawiya as an Infitah Icon ..........................................................................81 New Realism and the Cinematic Response to the Infitah .........................................86 Genre as Resistance to New Realism .......................................................................91 Chapter 4: Just a Sweet Vampire: The Oppositional Aesthetics of Camp and Cult Cinema .........................................................................................................................97 Cult Text ...................................................................................................................98 vi Camp as (Queer) Parody .........................................................................................107 The Intersection of Cult, Camp and Class ..............................................................116 Chapter 5: Conclusion: Fangs, Fangs, Everywhere There Are Fangs ...........................122 The Menetic Legacy of Anyab ................................................................................124 On the Multiple Readings of Anyab .......................................................................128 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................131 vii Chapter 1: Introduction: Where Are all the Middle-Eastern Disco Vampires Now? Egyptian cinema has been, for decades, consistently accused of “plagiarizing” or otherwise “ripping-off” Hollywood. But of all the American films that have been remade into “Egyptianized” versions, perhaps few stand out from the rest as starkly as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which was remade in 1981 as Mohamed Shebl’s musical debut film, Anyab (Fangs). An unabashed remake of the Jim Sharman camp-cult classic, Anyab is a similarly intertextual film whose multidimensional narrative and aesthetic demand repetitive viewings in order to be thoroughly comprehended, let alone appreciated.1 Following roughly the same plot and character archetypes of its source material, the film transplants Rocky Horror’s story and setting to an Egyptian context, replacing Dr. Frank-N-Furter with Dracula, and the overt queerness of the original text with didactic, satirical class commentary. Though the vast majority of the cast were by no means prominent celebrities, neither in their heyday nor in the decades since, two notable exceptions occur: the iconic musician Ahmed Adawiya, who plays Dracula, and the prominent director Hassan el-Imam, who plays the Narrator, the equivalent of Rocky Horror’s Criminologist. As an homage to a host of genre and B-movies, the convoluted plot of Rocky Horror is a pastiche of tropes from horror, science-fiction and cult cinema. The story is narrated by a criminologist who introduces the audience to the newly engaged––“innocent”–– couple, Brad and Janet (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon). Stranded on the side of an 1 Ohio road on a cold and rainy night due to a flat tire, they notice a nearby castle, which they approach looking for a telephone. There, they find a group of curious and flamboyant guests holding the “Annual Transylvanian Convention,” a bizarre event headed by the mad- scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry). Things only get stranger from there as Frank reveals that the “monster” he has been building is an extremely fit man named Rocky. After a brief celebration in honor of Frank’s success, Brad and Janet are separated and Frank appears in each’s room disguised as the other in order to sleep with them. Later, Janet wanders the castle only to find Rocky and become intimate with him. Frank catches them and becomes violently jealous of their relationship. Soon after, he petrifies his guests with the “Sonic Transducer” gun, dresses them up in cabaret outfits, and has them sing a musical number with him. It is then that the other residents of the castle reveal that they are actually aliens and that they are leaving earth without Frank. After killing him, they launch the castle into space, leaving the couple behind. Much like Brad and Janet––the couple we follow through the bizarre events of Rocky Horror––Ali el-Haggar and Mona Gabr’s Ali and Mona begin their story in what has been described as “the fairy-tale Kingdom of Normal.”2 The opening number of the film establishes them as a typical bourgeoisie couple of the period, set to marry as soon as Ali is able to secure an apartment. And similarly to Rocky Horror, the plot kicks into gear with the breakdown of their car on a dark and stormy night in which the only thing visible is a gauche mansion to which they head. Upon entering the gothic building to ask for help, they find themselves caught up in a bizarre world of “foreigners” headed by a lustful fiend who quickly proves himself to be the real star of the film. 2 Beginning with what I will refer to as the “vampire montage”––a lengthy sequence of vignettes in which Adawiya portrays various blue-collar workers “exploiting” the young bourgeoisie couple––the second act of Anyab digresses from the events of Rocky Horror, most probably due to the impossibility of recreating the original’s sexually charged scenes within Egyptian cinema’s censorship apparatus. That said, the film remains tonally consistent with the original film’s ethos of campy pastiche. The songs are entirely new, in Arabic and on their own share virtually nothing with the original’s. However, their narrative utility and placement within the film is analogous to those in Rocky Horror, particularly with regards to expositional numbers such as those that introduce the couple and the “villain.” Evidently, Shebl had no reservations about the film’s indebtedness to the original as there is a scene in which a character appears wearing a Rocky Horror t-shirt. The final act of Anyab shares a few narrative beats with that of Rocky Horror, but follows its own narrative and thematic logic. Just like Frank-N-Furter did with Janet, Dracula does attempt to seduce Mona, but she is completely resistant to his advances. Another significant